Blinded by the Thrill

Explosions, gun battles, bare skin, and make-out sessions reliably seize our attention, so it seems natural for advertisers to position their brands near sexy or violent material—the more eyes watching, the better. According to a paper in the journal Psychological Bulletin, however, this logic may have some holes. Breaking down the data from 53 experiments, communication researcher Robert Lull of the University of Pennsylvania and psychologist Brad Bushman of The Ohio State University extracted several findings.

Advertisements that featured violent or sexual content—or were attached to programming that did—were no more successful overall at building consumer interest than ads with no connection to sex or violence, the researchers found.

On several counts, connecting brands to violent or sexual material may backfire. Ads that were tied to violent media—TV spots during a war film, for example—tended to be less effective at generating positive brand impressions, memories of the brands depicted, and desire to buy them. Sexually charged ads produced less favorable attitudes toward the brands they promoted, on average, than "clean" ones, and in general, increased intensity of sexual content was associated with lower effectiveness.

"Anything that's emotionally arousing uses cognitive resources," Bushman explains. "If resources are being focused on violence and sex, it leaves fewer for paying attention to more peripheral cues, such as the products being advertised." When a rerun of Gladiator cuts to commercial, he says, "I think viewers are still thinking about gladiators instead of Tide laundry detergent or whatever the advertiser is trying to sell them."

One caveat: Violent and sexual ads seemed to perform better when paired with similarly themed content. Shoot-'em-up films may be the ideal fit for Grand Theft Auto spots; laundry detergent ads are probably best saved for Modern Family.

Excitement Unseen

Anagrams aren't exactly prime-time entertainment. But if for a fraction of a second, the image of an attractive, totally naked stranger were to flash before your eyes, well, a word puzzle might suddenly seem more interesting.

Sexual imagery can distract and unsettle viewers as well as excite them, but a paper in the Archives of Sexual Behavior finds that when processed unconsciously, nude pictures may send less ambivalent vibes. On average, heterosexual study participants who viewed pictures of unclothed, opposite-sex people for about 30 milliseconds at a time—briefly enough for them to pass under the radar—subsequently scored higher on a mood index, rated Chinese symbols as more likeable, and even expressed greater motivation to continue unscrambling words compared with subjects who saw subliminal but G-rated pictures. (These included images of a puppy and an attractive, but clothed, person.)

"We found a subtle way to increase persistence without anyone knowing about it," says co-author Omri Gillath, a psychologist at the University of Kansas. Additional measures suggest the unconscious images may have increased subjects' interest in sex as well. Controlled exposure like this may be rare outside the lab, but the experiments further reveal how sensitive our brains can be to primitive cues, even when we are not aware of them.

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